As the streaming industry continues to evolve, a troubling trend has emerged: significant portions of Australian media content are disappearing from public view. In recent months, leaders in the creative economy have warned about the effects this phenomenon has had on the cultural capital and identity of our communities. Meagan Loader of the National Film and Television Archive (NFSA) highlights that advances in technology have allowed access to “millions and millions” of pieces of content that were previously inaccessible. The woes of the NLA’s Trove situation highlight just how precarious digital preservation can be and the crying need to archive Australia’s incredibly rich media history.
The NFSA is central to protecting and preserving Australia’s media. Through its connections with production funding agencies, the archive maintains that any production funded by government, in whatever form, will be a part of its archival legacy. However, despite these valiant efforts, countless landmark series and movies are still teetering on the brink of permanent disappearance. This article explores the unique challenges Australian media preservation is facing today. It explores how streaming services are exacerbating this crisis, where that leaves our cultural heritage in our increasingly digital future, and much more.
The Fragile State of Cultural Heritage
Meagan Loader speaks to her twin concerns of knowledge and the passion for dollars in the field of media preservation. She advocates for a more specialized skill set to prepare and maintain archives over time. This is particularly key when it comes to running super antiquated technology, such as 2-inch video machines. This technology is essential to reaching history’s great content, but fewer Americans know how to use it to their full potential.
Loader further highlights the issues of digital archiving and the ephemeral nature of technology and platforms such as TikTok. “That’s the next kind of digital desert in archives,” she remarks, highlighting how rapidly changing technology can make content obsolete. We all know that streaming platforms are taking over the entertainment industry. Their shifting libraries always has us concerned about the fate of legacy productions.
“I think that cultural heritage and its legacy really articulates who we are and shows us where we’ve been.” – Cultural Heritage Advocate
The Australian media landscape is full of brilliance and tradition, yet so many treasured programs have disappeared without a trace. As an example, very few episodes from the 1971-78 period of Frankie’s “Young Talent Time” remain. Loader’s words speak to a larger cultural anxiety about the ways in which these losses affect our shared memory and identity.
The Impact of Streaming Services
The emergence of streaming services and the corresponding disruption to traditional media consumption has brought many of those challenges to a head. While this shift has made content more accessible, it has revealed a blindspot in the preservation of that content. Disney+, for instance, recently cancelled the Australian-produced series “Nautilus” just months after its extensive production had concluded. Comedian Eliza Skinner’s talk show “Earth to Ned” was another surprise cancellation. As a consequence, she was without a copy of her work.
Several high-profile shows have been quietly removed from platforms due to controversy or changing viewer expectations. In 2020, Netflix pulled several Chris Lilley shows thought to use blackface, a move that displayed changing public attitudes on representation. Their removal raises larger questions about the lack of curation on today’s streaming services. This precarious reality extends beyond how we take care of our tangible history.
Neil operates the popular Strange Australian YouTube channel. For one, he underscores how onerous copyright laws frequently intimidate and discourage amateur archivists from sharing their experiences with the general public. He gets angry when production companies don’t take responsibility for archiving their works. This unintended consequence endangers all of those productions, making them likely to vanish permanently from streaming services.
“If somebody doesn’t screen capture it all, then it’s effectively out of the public view if it vanishes from a streaming service.” – Neil
The cancellation of these productions stands as a loss not only to our theatrical landscape but to our cultural memory.
The Challenge of Digital Preservation
As technology advances, so does the growing field of born-digital preservation. Loader emphasizes the need for continuous updates to digital files to prevent obsolescence: “We need to upgrade the digital files to new formats every few years so that the digital files don’t become obsolete.” This new requirement further highlights the importance of continued and sustained work to keep all historical media accessible to the public.
With the NFSA, we stand ready to help each of these challenges. As Loader points out, there is a dwindling pool of people trained to operate and maintain obsolete archival equipment. This ongoing scarcity threatens the very preservation of Australia’s audiovisual historical record.
“There’s less and less people who were brought up around those machines and know how to operate them, or know how to maintain them or fix them.” – Meagan Loader
Media consumption is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Collaboration between stakeholders in the public and private sectors is vital in developing sustainable strategies to protect and conserve Australia’s cultural heritage. Neil highlights the urgency of this issue: “They make it, they get the tax break and they move onto the next project and their hard drives get erased.”
